Tom, Dick, and Maggy
NO sooner does a baby receive its given name than renaming begins. Today I’m looking at the curious process.
Tom
For instance, Thomas at the font changes to Tom, Tommy, and Tam. Tom is a shortening, like most given names which have more than one syllable.
Tommy has the diminutive ending, familiar or affectionate. Both fit more smoothly into the surrounding rhythm of talking.
Thomas! addressed in full original form sounds like a major parental reprimand, as if he isn’t “living up to his [given] name”. Tam is the shortening from over the Border, with vowel change; similarly in Maori Tame. Sally and Margaret So far so good. But how does Sarah become Sally? How does
Margaret become not only Maggie (shortening) and Meg or Mags (double shortening) but also Peggy and Peg (with change of initial letter as well)? And Polly, which gets mixed up with
Pauline but is a different variant? Why do some given names attract more variation than others? Or can we only say how, not why? Out of the gazillion speechinteractions which produced Polly from
Margaret, we do know the howandwhy, phonetically. “M” and “P” seem far apart as consonants, yet not so in the mouth, as pronounced: M and P (and B) all come out close together, from the lips, from closed lips opened up by the release of breath.
Robert, Robin, and Richard
OK, but then how does Robert become Bob or Bobby, since R and B are less close phonetically? And how come Richard produces the D (not B) of Dick, Dicky, and
Dickon? I dunno, though their endings are easier to explain, as again fitting into the rhythm and flow of familiar speaking: Dick shortens two syllables to one, Dicky keeps the two but makes a more rapidly sounding ending, y or ie.
Dickon did the same, more grandly or just medievally.
Uncle Bill and Uncle Will
I had two uncles christened
William: one was Uncle Will, the other was Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill’s surname was Williams, so was he shortened to Bill not Will in order to vary the sonic effect?
Willy Williams sounds better than Will Williams, and Bill
Williams slightly better again. It’s a volatile initial, to judge by its counterparts in related languages, Guillaume, Vilhelm, and Gwilliam.
Guessing
Much of this is guesswork. Readers, please put me right. Possibly you have been given, or have given these names and will know more about them. Phoneticians, too, pronounce!
Tolstoy
The whole business casts a curious sidelight on who we are and how we grow up. You see this in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
It begins, often, with a castlist, teeming with names and labels. Some main characters have only one form of their given name, or a bare two. Pierre (Pyotr) has one: he’s a complete loner, illegitimate. And though Andre is
Andrushka to his sister, affectionate names are sparse in his twiceover motherless household.
Nikolai Rostov, however, and his sister live through family, and have multiple changing names for their teeming interactions: Kolya, Nikolenka, Nikolushka, Kolya, Coco . . . ; Anastasia, Natalie, Natasha. Now look at their personalities. The two loners are thinking characters, whereas the last two live in their feelings, they think (when they do think) in zigzags or flashes. Tolstoy is in all of them, they join up in him; and in him, too, thinking fights with feelings.
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